Nowadays, almost all websites offer you an option to sign up with your e-mail address to be up to date with all the news and promotions. Once you sign up, your e-mail is added to a mailing list of the company of your choice, and in return, you are usually first to know about all information related to that company. It’s great for both sides because you get the info you may be looking for straight to your inbox, and the company has a list of potential customers which they can reach whenever they need.
Because of that, having a mailing list is a great way of growing your business, no matter if you are just a small blog or a huge business. If you don’t have one or have just started and feel lost, in this post, I will teach you the very basics and explain all the main things you need to know.
Create a Mailing List
(Skip if you already have one)
There are lots of companies that offer this feature. I have been using Mailchimp for about 6 years. However, I recently switched to Flodesk, and it was one of the best business decisions I had. To learn more and create your own mailing list, visit our previous post:
THE BEST NEWSLETTER PROVIDER FOR SMALL BUSINESSES AND BLOGS
Once you have a mailing list account created, here are all the things you need to know to start using it.
Let people subscribe
Your new list is empty, so you need to collect your visitor’s e-mails to fill it up.
To do so, you will need opt-in forms. Those usually have fields for name and e-mail and can be placed anywhere on your website (homepage, sidebar, inside a post). To add an opt-in form, you will need to grab its code from your newsletter provider page (for example, Flodesk) or use a plugin to integrate your provider with WordPress.
One form code can be placed in more than one spot, but it will still save all the collected e-mails into one huge list.
Some designs already include styled opt-in forms so if you are looking for a design for your site, browse our WordPress premade themes. They not only have styled opt-in boxes for Mailchimp and Flodesk (we can adjust them for other providers too!), but we also set them up for you free of charge!
Start sending e-mails
Ok, you got some people signed via forms, and your mailing list is filling up, what’s next?
There are two types of e-mails that are essential for you at the very beginning:
#1 Normal e-mail
It is as simple as it sounds. Those are just normal e-mails that you send to all subscribers at once via your subscription provider site (like Flodesk) You manually send them to your subscribers – they can include anything you want, from updates to promotions.
#2 Automation
Those are e-mails that are automatically sent to your subscribers. The most popular will be the ‘Welcome’ e-mail sent to all new subscribers, including the most important information about your company.
The second popular choice is e-mails sent every time you post something on your blog. Both options are not the default setting of your subscription and need to be set up on your subscription provider site. Not all subscription providers allow for automation, so you need to check if you have such an option available first!
Important: Automation needs to be set up for each subscriber list separately!
You do not need to pick wich option you prefer as both standard e-mails and automation can work together and be used simultaneously.
Offer freebies to gain more subscribers
You can encourage people to sign-up for your list by offering freebies. This option (also called a lead magnet) is a type of automation.
You can send an automated e-mail (Welcome e-mail) with a link to the freebie uploaded on your website, or you can sometimes upload it directly on the subscription provider site. It all depends on the options the provider offers you.
And that’s everything you need to know about mailing lists to start collecting e-mails and growing your subscriber list! Remember that if you feel stuck at any of the steps described above, you can send me an e-mail and I will do my best to help!
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The post Everything You Need to Know About the Mailing List Feature for Your Site appeared first on Designer Blogs.
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Author: Kate
